Workforce Development Spotlight: Schultz Family Foundation
May 26, 2021
Connect Focus Grow, Workforce Development
As we spread the message of the importance of mentoring in the workplace through the Workplace Equity Pledge, we’re spotlighting key partners doing innovative and remarkable work in this arena. For this piece, we talked to our partners at the Schultz Family Foundation, a foundation that delivers its mission – to create greater opportunity, accessible to all – through deep cross-sector engagement and support to its grantees.
Connecting All Sides of the Equation to Solve Urgent Problems
The Schultz Family Foundation believes everyone should have the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families. For many young people, systemic inequities create barriers to obtaining employment and advancing in the workplace. To help address workforce development problems rooted in inequity, the Foundation works as a conduit – not only providing funding to organizations doing the work, but also providing key resources to grantees with common goals and shared challenges. The Foundation’s president, Tyra A. Mariani explains, “We think of our partners as the experts, and we’re the enablers. We have continuous conversations with leaders working to provide meaningful pathways for young people which allows us to have an ecosystem-level view of the field. We’re able to connect innovators and experts who may not traditionally work together to one another for added impact. And often times, this is reciprocal. MENTOR has introduced us to world-class experts in social capital as well as other funders working toward similar goals.”
By investing in a range of initiatives, from research to programmatic implementation, the Foundation helps grantees see beyond their individual focuses to understand broader intersecting issues. For example, the Foundation recently supported Mathematica, a leading research organization, to conduct a study entitled Youth Unemployment in the First Year of COVID-19: From Breakout to the Vaccine Rollout. The report reveals how the pandemic disrupted young people’s employment opportunities and outlines the stark differences in youth unemployment recovery rates based on gender, race/ethnicity, and geography. By sharing this report and key learnings, including the discovery that rising unemployment during the early stages of the pandemic was particularly pronounced among female youth and Asian American youth, the Foundation facilitates a critical sense of focus to organizations currently working on recovery efforts and helps shine a light on the young people who need the most support. With the knowledge that unemployment rates of people ages 16-24 were more than twice as high as other age groups during a time when young people should be building the foundations of a successful working life, policymakers and other decision-makers should consider immediate resource allocations to communities most affected.
The Foundation recently connected MENTOR to the Hire Opportunity Coalition, a national employer-led movement aimed at closing the employment gap for disconnected youth. This partnership is helping MENTOR scale webs of support for Opportunity Youth (young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor participating in the labor market) and other young people facing employment barriers. With the Foundation’s support, MENTOR is developing a first-of-its-kind national mentoring initiative, The National Mentoring Project. In this initiative, MENTOR is collaborating with large corporations, national non-profit partners, and workforce development programs to match young people with trained, community-based mentors and workplace mentors once employed. In addition to increasing the quantity of mentoring connections for Opportunity Youth, the initiative is also increasing the quality of mentoring through the creation of tools and support systems that are tailored specifically to address the challenges faced by young people as they seek to obtain employment and build professional networks.
Looking Ahead
Creating synergy among key partners in this moment of post-pandemic recovery gives MENTOR’s partners at the Foundation a unique lens to envision young people’s future. Tyra says, “The future we envision for young people is one of unlimited opportunity. They have a web of adults around them who are in their corner, supporting them and helping them navigate the too-often complicated world of work.” She goes on, “A true measure of diversity, equity, and inclusion is if a person can bring their whole selves to work. We want the workplace to be safe and inclusive for all young people so they can do this, which is why employers are such key partners for both the Foundation and MENTOR. And we’re hopeful that future educational and workforce systems will allow for more choice and opportunity, including living wage jobs and career advancement pathways, so that all young people can thrive.”